Maurice Battilana, the CEO of Chapman Valley Shire gave us a brief overview of the operation of Local Government.

There is a huge problem with the legislation governing Local Government. The 1960 Act was changed in 1995 to “supposedly” reduce the “red tape” controlling them and allowing councils to become more entrepreneurial. Did this happen? By 2020 there will be 25000 pages of Primary Legislation in the Local Government Act with a legislative burden of 8% of GDP and costing ratepayers in W.A $20million for compliance. Imagine if these funds were available to Councils !

There has been a surge in corruption investigations. In the last 2 years the CCC has had 700 allegations made against Local Government. 10 were investigated and 2 cases were found to have misconduct. The current saga with the Lord Mayor of Perth is not helping with Local Government image. For comparison, 8500 allegations have been made against the State Government.

Maurice is an advocate of structural reform however he believes that boundary changes should be determined by people NOT politicians and sharing of resources would improve efficiencies. The constant cost shifting from Federal to State to Local Government has a major effect on our rates.

(I hope my summary is near correct. Apologies to Maurice and the Accountants if I have erred.)